Penn State coach James Franklin’s voice booms at the end of a winter workout, encouraging his team to finish strong. It’s not a new concept in college football, particularly at Penn State, where Dwight Galt takes over the team’s strength and conditioning program from former pupil Craig Fitzgerald.

Penn State offered a behind the scenes look at the team’s first winter workouts, which were spirited and focused on competition, much like they did under Fitzgerald. Drills were conventional and focused on speed and agility, and the session ended with one-on-one tug-o-wars with tires.

The video offered an early glimpse into Franklin as a coach after a month of watching him play the salesman role. The recruiting push is over, and the real preparations have begun for Franklin’s first season on the sideline.

“As you can see, we are going to compete and we’re going to fly around and we’re going to have fun,” Franklin said to his team afterward. “We’re going to have a little bit maybe different edge than we’ve had in the past.

“We’ve got a bunch of veterans that have been through stuff like this before, that have played a lot of games here. We need you leading by your actions, and we need you leading and encouraging the young guys, especially these five new guys that just showed up on campus two weeks ago.”

Franklin offered a final piece of advice to the team and another look at his coaching philosophy as the players wrestled over a tire.

“Control your breathing,” he said. “We do that at the end because anybody can do it when they’re fresh. We want to see how you guys are going to compete when times are tough. How are you going to compete when you’re tired? This is about mental and physical toughness.”